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Matchmaking

Blurbs, those glowing sentences scattered on dust jackets, are a book’s come-hither, essential to an industry that hopes to get its decent-looking single friend on the best-seller list. As a publicist friend told me, “Blurbs offer readers reassurance that a book’s worth getting cozy with.” Mandy Stadtmiller, of the New York Post, in a piece describing her induction to the blurbing gig, claims that it’s not “simply an insider’s game of back scratching and industry favors.…Sometimes you can judge a book by its blurber.”

Blurbs seem to fall into two categories. Paraphrased-review blurbs credit the publication from which they were pruned, and are full of strategic ellipses. On Taras Grescoe’s “The Devil’s Picnic” National Geographic Adventure supplied “Wildly entertaining…when it comes to combustibles, Grescoe is fearless.” Solicited-writer blurbs, on the other hand, require the editor to send out hopeful notes with advance galleys and pray every night for something like Steven Pinker’s assessment of “Human: The Science of What Makes Us Unique”:

Michael Gazzaniga, among the most influential psychologists in the world today, has put it all together for us in this shimmering new book. Using his trademark wit and lack of pretension, he explains the latest findings from the sciences of mind and brain in a coherent and satisfying narrative.

Pairing blurb to author is easy for books about food or science, but what about literary fiction? And poetry? A lot has been written about Charles Bukowski, but apparently “Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it further”—from the L.A. Times—is liable to move the most volumes of “The Pleasures of the Damned.” Lack of blurbs also makes a statement: the galley of the superstar David Sedaris’s new book has none—likely because it didn’t need them—and neither does James Frey’s “Bright Shiny Morning,” for reasons unknown. On the other hand, why not go whole hog? The cover of the promotional copy of “My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge,” Paul Guest’s second collection of poems, asks “What do John Ashbery, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Mary Karr, Campbell McGrath, and Mark Strand have in common?” The answer, inside: “They all admire Paul Guest’s new book of poems.” As far as seduction rituals go, this blurb is the poetry equivalent of inviting you to a sleepover at the Playboy mansion.

Of course, as with pick-up lines, there’s bound to be some post-encounter regret—for parties on both sides. My publicist friend mentioned an editor she knows who longs to sum up her past with a T-shirt that reads, “I feel bad about my blurbs.”—Jenna Krajeski

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